Social network

It should come as no surprise that a one-dimensional approach to network “deployment” will yield lackluster results. In the heyday of the Enterprise 2.0 movement, it was largely IT that introduced social networks to the workforce. The mistake that many customers made in those early days was viewing social networks as a technology platform vs. an organizational catalyst for transformation. Even if the initial use cases were solid, and vendors provided initial on-ramp training, the true power of a connected workforce would not emerge. Social software is much more than the sum of its technical parts. In fact, you could argue the opposite is true. Organizations that took a multi-departmental approach to rolling out ESNs, have proven to be successful, are still growing, and have produced outsized returns to their organizations.

Diagram of a Social Network. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Learning to work in a connected, flat, transparent, and highly collaborative manner invariably surfaces tensions that require intra-organizational re-thinking. They demand a new type of leadership.

Petty arguments that erupt over jurisdiction, approvals, roles, decision-making, authority, and budget allocation are exposed and rendered useless and highly unproductive when vibrant networks connect and share. It’s one of the reasons why rigorous command and control, hierarchical models can’t survive in a healthy, transparent and functionally strong social network.

When we started assembling the members of Change Agents Worldwide, we knew we’d need a cross-disciplinary team that was equally adept at the mechanics and Zen of working in an open network, as well as experienced in the disciplines required to deliver true organizational change. We’re also becoming more and more knowledgable about the science and practical application of Social Network Analysis (SNA). In mapping our own expertise,* you can see although we share many competencies, our social map demonstrates a visualization of the skills required to truly help large organizations take steps toward building a future workplace.

In this expertise map, a square signifies an area of expertise of one of our Change Agents. The larger the square, the larger the number of Change Agents (green dots) possess that expertise. A line between a circle and a square indicates a Change Agents possessing that expertise. Darker lines indicate greater degrees of expertise.

If your Enterprise Social Network has stalled, or you’re not seeing these outsized results, we can help you start extracting the value out of your existing investment. If you truly want to experience what it feels like to be surrounded with this sort of expertise, we invite you to join us in our Green Room. It’s free, and we will swarm you with ideas on how to approach your organizational issue.

We started working on the business almost a year ago to the day. Over the course of the year, various members of our network have blogged about what we think, how we work, and what we believe. But, we never formally “launched” the business. We are still fine-tuning some of our progressive network-era based business processes, so we are still not ready to announce the business formally to the market. That day will come, but we want to be ready when we open the floodgates.

That said, we’ve attracted a nice following of friends and fans who are getting swept up in the excitement around what we’re building. We felt it was time to provide a little more detail around who we are. This presentation gives a good overview of the basics.

So What’s Next?

Our virtual doors are now open and we are ready to work with you. We invite you to experience, firsthand, our collaborative work environment. We can help you create solutions to some of your most pressing business issues. Some examples include:

How to build next generation networks and communities that thrive.

How to implement transformational change from organization design to new technologies like Enterprise Social Networks.

How to prepare for the future of work and increase productivity, employee engagement, customer experience , innovation and growth.

How to make your organization more responsive, resilient, agile and open to ongoing change.

Change Agents Worldwide is ready to help you develop faster and more flexible solutions with some of the best minds in the industry. We’d love to start a conversation and give you a glimpse of how we can all operate successfully in the networked age.

Lead Change Now

Change Agents Worldwide believes creating the future of work is a human endeavour. Ensuring effective collaboration requires organisations to adopt new practices and approaches. Your employees don’t want a new gadget, a new process or a new organisation structure. They want more effective and rewarding work. We believe that change starts one human at a time. You are that human. Start now.

We Are Worldwide

Change Agents Worldwide is a global network of future of work practitioners committed to changing work. Our members work with organisations in the US, Europe, Australia and Asia. Our network model and use of collaboration tools enable us to bring the global expertise of our network to every project. We would love to work to make your organisation more effective.

We Help Change Agents

We help change agents be more effective in their organisations. Our Mantra outlines our beliefs. Enquire about membership to learn more.